Bye, Bye, Bernie

I did not support Bernie Sanders last time, and will not again, even though I might positively check most of his policy boxes. 

I gave him another chance while watching his CNN “town hall” but had to leave after a few minutes when I realized what a horrible candidate he is. He is unlistenable-to with a whiny Brooklyn accent; lengthy explications when a bumper-sticker-answer might convince, God forbid, excite someone; condescension and utter lack of genuineness. He is the most unlikeable politician I have ever encountered.

Today, I read this, and now believe he is a useless, horrible, specimen of a human being, as well -- Trumpian, by way of despising a free press and possessing not an ounce of humility or humor. He is a nightmare because, like Trump, he attracts politically brainless political neophytes. But unlike Trump, his voters have demonstrated they would rather lose the presidency than exhibit any common sense.

Since it is unlikely that either the House or Senate would become Democratic Socialist after a Sanders victory, try to imagine him managing the daily push-and-pull of events. 

I cannot.

Toppling a Lie

Today is the 10th anniversary of one of television’s biggest lies.

As a reporter trained to look for himself at the edges of the screen after covering a public event, my eyes scanned the perimeter of that TV shot in Baghdad when a few Iraqis were throwing shoes at the Saddam Hussein statue on April 9, 2003.

As the CNN camera pulled back, it exposed the typical distortion of television, specifically the fact there were only about a dozen people in the square. But at the edge of wide shot was a U.S. military vehicle with a crane on it and soldiers hanging off the side just watching -- and waiting. As the CNN live coverage drew even more Iraqis to the square as willing participants in a U.S. TV propaganda production, that military vehicle edged closer to the action until, unbidden, it pulled down the statue. Eventually a rogue soldier mounted a U.S. flag over the scene until some general made him take it down.

The footage and still photographs became an icon of how wonderful America was in bringing “freedom” to Iraq. It was, and remains, a lie; another example in a long history of television and the U.S. military manipulating the truth.

As with the staged photo of Marines raising the flag atop Mt. Suribachi, be skeptical of everything;  for as the basic rule of journalism states: "Believe nothing of what you read and only half of what you see."

And ask yourself if Iraqis, or Americans, are better off today than they were 10 years ago.

War Powers

How can all the Obama-haters who called him a ditherer for not intervening in Libya now turn around and complain that such action is illegal? The Republicans, including the once-but-no-longer-honorable Richard Lugar, suddenly wonder where Congress’ constitutional power to declare war went.

It went out of business due to lack of use since the U.S. declaration of war against Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria nearly 70 years ago and a subsequent 23 undeclared military interventions. Overnight, Lugar has metamorphosed from a sage foreign policy expert into a teabag ninny pooping in his pants from primary competition from the Clown Right.

And what of Democrats, whose anti-Vietnam histrionics in the 1970s led to passage of the War Powers Act, which had as its chief unforeseen consequence giving any president much more power than he already had. The Act allows him, as commander in chief, to inform Congress and then do anything he wants militarily for 60 days before having to ask for further approval. That he did not officially inform Congress of the Libyan intervention is irrelevant, given the instantaneous nature of political reporting. Only Michelle Bachmann could not have understood what this country’s policy was going to be.

Then there are the middle-of-the-road whiners who ask the silly question, “If we are going to use military force for humanitarian reasons, why not use it against every repressive dictators?” Put aside the fact that other sons of bitches are our sons of bitches, Libya is easy to get to and easy to get out of it. Is something we can do, whether or not we should.

It is an operation I think shows Obama at his best. Remember Bush 43 -- say anything, go anywhere, take up arms in a manner guaranteed to cause defeat? As he did in his successful primary and general election campaigns, Obama ignored the hand-wringers who demanded he push some magic button to get tough, quietly put together political alliances, treated the public like adults and won the day.

IF the United States has an interest in supporting democratic movements in the Middle East – and I don’t know that it does – then it has to do so in a way that shows we are acting in concert with other democracies and that does not inflame the people we are supposed to be helping.

I now get to turn the age-old question around and put it to the Lugars, Pauls, Webbs, Sanderses and the rest of the Senate Sandbox – whose side are you really on?

Which Country is More Democratic? Hard to Tell in the Washington Post

I rarely read Washington Post editorials, but I looked in at this one today simply because I felt I did not know enough about Hugo Chavez, the nutfuck who runs Venezuela and could conceivably stop the export of shortstops to the United States.

The editorial recounts that Chavez was re-elected although he lost the popular vote by 52 percent to 48 percent. The reason was the “blatant gerrymandering” that caused Chavez’s supporters to dominate the parliament. This must be a terrible thing because we in the United States would never countenance having a house of parliament in which members representing half the population have only 20 percent of the seats. We would never countenance having another house of parliament composed of members from districts that are no longer competitive.

The Post goes on to say: “Mr. Chávez's apologists will be pointing to the congressional vote as proof that he still leads a democracy. But in democracies, elections produce consequences in line with the results."

Who knew that irony was still alive -- and that the august Washington Post couldn’t recognize it? As the old saying goes, the editors couldn’t get a clue during the clue mating season in a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance.

Here is a big clue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore

Wallowing

Through cable TV, the Internet and even AM radio, the United States today is doing what it does best . We are wallowing like pigs in a mudbath of bathos. I am unaware of other nations that celebrate their defeats as much as, if not more than, their victories. Where were the public demonstrations for the recent 65^th anniversaries of V-E and V-J Days?

Yet, you cannot open your eyes or ears on this day and not hear a radio commercial promising proceeds of some fly-by-night promotion going to “wounded warriors,” see a newspaper picture of a sports start giving an autograph to children of someone killed on 9/11, or experiencing politicians of all stripes (including yellow) just before an election dwelling on morbid memories. The victims of 9/11 shouldn’t be forgotten – by their families and friends. But how should I remember someone I don’t know and who did nothing but show up for work on time or board an airplane?

The rest of us are 9/11 victims, too -- of a peculiarly morbid American fixation on terrorism by which we daily accept the victory of the skyjacking Muslim murderers. Our every movement in or near public buildings, our phone conversations, our travel, and even our thoughts are now circumscribed forever lest we “give in” to terrorists.

We gave in from the beginning.

“Terrorists” (and I suppose I would have to include freedom-fighters known by various names such as Minutemen, the Irgun, Algerian rebels or Viet Cong) win at the very moment they replace the concept of “territory” to be won with “terror” that robs ordinary people of their ordinary lives.

We are perpetually honoring servicemen and women who signed up out of patriotism, a lust for adventure or the need for a job and then feel they are denigrated for doing their jobs if we don’t stop every couple of minutes as a nation to worship them. But why don’t we actually fight back against the real enemies – Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and, yes, the brand of Islam that will fight until it takes over what is left of the world? That would take a much larger mobilization and a larger dollop of courage than the United States is willing to expend – especially when it is so much easier to bitch, moan and wallow

President Obama epitomizes the lunacy that attaches to the memorialization of a terrible event by saying that we must not let our anger override the constitutional rights of our citizens -- at the very same time that his secretary of defense and top military commander “ask” a wacko Christian preacher to give up his constitutional right to burn a Koran.

This fruitcake Terry Jones is the only honest one among those using 9/11 for their personal glory. He believes Islam is evil and wanted to do something about it. If Obama, Secretary of Defense Gates , General Petraeus and the flag-waving news media were honest, they would have ignored Jones. If Muslims acted against American interests as a result, they would have gone to real war against Islam, saying that the American culture believes in freedom of expression and we will fight you to all our deaths to defend that freedom. Not just make laughably empty speeches.

Rolling Blunder and Sunshine Camo

Washington, D.C., is full of crap most of the time, but this weekend it is all of the time.

The crap this Memorial Day weekend is "Rolling Thunder," the massing of flag-waving bikers commemorating Vietnam veterans by revving their motors and pounding their chests in case anyone might think these losers also lost that undeclared, indecent, unnecessary and un-American war.

Most people don't even know what "Rolling Thunder" means. It was the name of most prolonged and least successful military campaign waged in modern times -- the three-and-a-half-year carpet bombing by the United States of civilian targets in North Vietnam, far surpassing the morally questionable, though probably justified, air terror unleashed by the Air Force against Germany in World War II.

Speaking of misplaced loyalties, the San Diego Padres baseball team showed up today in jerseys decorated in military camouflage, no doubt in tribute to the city's major industry -- training Navy and Marine Corps warriors.

These players are generally between the ages of 20 and 40 and among the physically fittest of Americans. Why aren't the American citizens among them wearing real uniforms instead of their phony camo jerseys?

If you would like your very own sunshine patriot camo jersey, you can get it on the Internet for $199.

Collateral Murder

I went to Opening Day of the baseball season in Washington today and found that my love of the sport is diminishing -- at least my love of attending Major League games.

For one thing, there is no chance to relax at the ballpark anymore because every inch of every surface -- from the outfield walls, to the electronic displays of patriotism, promotion and advertising, to the scoreboard, to the airwaves themselves that are roiled by constant noise from the p.a. system -- is dedicated to selling you something.

Another thing I can barely stomach anymore is the selling by Major League Baseball of fake patriotism through the veneration of anyone connected with the military.

I was going blog about my impressions of the game, but when I got home I did my cursory check of the news online and found a disturbing video of how such patriots deal with my kind of patriots -- journalists (not to mention civilians and children.)

The video speaks for itself, and I recommend it for anyone who still has any illusions about the conduct of American foreign policy in 2007.

D.C. Droppings -- XXI

A Basement

Now that language maven William Safire has ascended to a higher state of existence, to exchange bon mots with the Great Lexicographer, who will police the abasement of English?

I am in a stupor, perhaps because I spent three hours late yesterday sitting in a 42-degree rain watching a meaningless and incompetently played college football game. But also because I spent some choice time this Sunday morning watching cable news and reading the Washington Post.

These are among the canaries in the coal mine of language, the harbingers of a slow lingering death of thought:

Upon every change of possession or roughly every two minutes, the football game was interrupted by “official timeouts” not charged against either team. These are understood to occur because the network broadcasting the game needs to sell commercial time. For decades, they have been known as “TV timeouts.” Fine. Yesterday, a what bills itself an outstanding national university, these stoppages of play were announced as “media timeouts.” Assuming “media” mean “mass media,” which presumably meant journalistic enterprises, I have to ask whether it was the Baltimore Sun that asked for the timeout? Or Sports Illustrated? Or www.turtle-soup.com? No, it was TV! Yes, it was a TV timeout. Why gild the lily with a stinkweed?

Why would a university with aspirations for becoming one of the top 10 public universities pay one of its highest salaries to an ungrammatical slob who says such things as “I don't think the teams we are playing are better than us.” Last year he belittled the American victims of a Second World War atrocity when he compared his team’s injury roll to the Bataan Death March.”

In this morning’s Washington Post sports section, it was written that “Washington Nationals high-priced prospect Stephen Strasburg reached 99 miles per hour with his first pitch.” How can you “reach” a point on the first attempt?

In the more serious section of the newspaper, I read an excerpt from a book co-authored by the legendary Bob Woodward, who has an unparalleled penchant for interviewing people just before they die and then printing their words when they cannot deny them is, wrote “ … Westmoreland is like the leader of a block of some 20 senators … ” The correct word has always been, and remains, “bloc” – defined by dictionary.com as:
1. a group of persons, businesses, etc., united for a particular purpose.
2. a group of legislators, usually of both major political parties, who vote together for some particular interest: the farm bloc.

It is one thing for Woodward, of whom it was said 36 years ago that he wrote English as if it were his second language, to misuse the language, but what about his book editors? What about the crack editors at the Washington Post?

On a lesser scale of idiocy, comes MSNBC’s weekend airhead, Alex “the Twit” Witt, who a few days ago informed viewers that Pakistan and Afghanistan have “a very superfluous border.” This morning, she told us that “Heene was greeted by a barrage of reporters.” A barrage denotes the frequency and intensity of something, as a barrage of artillery fire, and is not a group of fellow sensation-seeking journalists. A minute or two later she reported that Pacific Hurricane Rick “is scheduled to hit Baja California on Thursday.” This would be real meteorological news if you can schedule, rather than merely predict, landfall.

The Silence of the Cowards

That Washington Post excerpt containing the dying apologies of two of the “best and brightest” minds of the 1960s for their complicity in the continuing degradation of America’s national security, is a must-read for those too young to remember the Vietnam War, the single worst U.S. misadventure since Bush invaded the wrong country.

We are paying for Bush and paying for Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy’s malfeasance in the service of war criminal Lyndon Johnson. It was not McNamara’s and Bundy’s misjudgment that is to blame for the death of 57,000 American troops and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians, it was their cowardice. They knew Vietnam was wrong from the beginning, they say they tried to tell LBJ, but they were more concerned with how to tell him rather than what to tell him, and they did not resign when that moral monster persisted in mass murder.

Their legacy is that, like Bush's, of making it impossible to fight any war with any moral clarity no matter what, which means the United States of America is a second- or third-rate power in decline. Thus, the actions of Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy and George W. Bush are not those of national leaders – they are the actions of traitors.

If it weren't for the honor ...

I thought they were joking when I woke up to the news on the right-wing morning show called “Morning Joe,” but apparently it is true that President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. So there, International Olympic committee

Seriously, I love Obama, but, frankly, if I were him, I would say,

“Thanks for the honor but I respectfully decline it. I would not wear the same medal you have bestowed upon war criminals like Henry Kissinger, baby butchers like Yasser Arafat and elected presidential nonentities like Jimmy Carter and Al Gore.”

The Cowardly Lyin'

Not only is he a murderous lowlife and war criminal, but Dick Cheney is also a coward. I am not referring to the fact he skipped out on the draft five times during the Vietnam war on grounds “I had better things to do,” I am talking about him hiding behind the skirt of his equally mendacious daughter.

That would be daughter Liz, the one who actually wears skirts.

Having found a compatriate in Mika Brzezinski, hosting the “Morning Joe” show on MSNBC in Joe’s absence, Liz keeps appearing as a guest to accuse Democrats of disloyalty, and Mika nods her heads and kisses her ass rather than ask any obvious questions. This could be because Mika Brzezinski is the spawn of a previous generation’s war criminal, Zbigniew Brzezinksi, who I first encountered in 1964 when he was, from an academic perch, calling for escalation of the war Liz’s father ducked out on. He later became the national security adviser to that genius of American foreign policy, Jimmy Carter, and a staunch opponent of Israel’s security.

The issue today is Dick Cheney’s reliably reported order to the CIA to keep Congress in the dark about a program that apparently planned to assassinate al-Qaeda leaders after 9/11.
While her daddy went out a few months ago on a public relations offensive to slime Democrats the way his former boss Richard Nixon did without a twitch, all of a sudden when the heat is on him for traducing the Constitution and his boss, Cheney the coward is in hiding and sending his daughter out to friendly TV shows to not quite make his case.

What is her expertise? Liz Cheney served in the Bush administration as a deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. Like she was really qualified for it. Like Mika Brzezinski is qualified for anything but giggling and defending Sarah Palin “as a woman.”

What is the substance of my complaint? When Liz Cheney is asked to defend her father’s illegal act in telling the CIA to hide information from those whom the law dictates be informed, she says he has not spoken to her about it because it involves classified information. Yet Lying Liz then goes on an uninterrupted rant saying Democrats are “emboldening” the enemy and “weakening us” – without a shred of evidence, because such evidence is classified. Or is it?

I won’t argue the United States should not have done everything possible to kill al-Qaeda leaders – though it is illegal for the CIA itself to do so. And it sure would have made more sense than invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

But there are three facts to keep in mind that apparently have slipped through Liz Cheney’s pleated brain: 1) The program was never put into operation and the only reason why not apparently is that we didn’t have the means or will. 2) The law requires eight congressional leaders to be apprised of CIA activities as a measure of oversight caused by the very rogue activities – like overthrowing the popular leader of Iran in 1953—that put the United States in the weakened condition it is now. 3) In the 34 years of the notification requirement, there has never been a leak.

As for Cheney the Dick, one assumes he has gone underground either because he could be arrested and extradited for crimes against humanity or because he is much more comfortable closer to hell.

King of Pop, King of Poop , King of GOP, King of Hell

With all his plastic surgery and self mutilation, I wonder if Michael Jackson even had to be embalmed.

The spectacle of his death and the frenzy of fulsome flattering fools makes me tremble for America, much more so than from nuclear arms proliferation, economic ruin or even Sarah Palin.

Among the indecencies is the insertion of Al Sharpton into the proceedings and his calling out of the mass media for pointing out the obvious truth that Michael Jackson had “issues.”

Sharpton, as you will remember was, before he became self proclaimed king of black America, a charlatan rabble-rouser who claimed as fact that a troubled 13-year-old girl was raped and smeared with feces by white racists, defamed a cop and refused to pay libel judgment, sparked a riot in Brooklyn in which a man was killed because he was Jewish.

As a result of his first descent into infamy alone, Sharpton is the King of Poop.

I don’t know why black America, to the extent one can say it exists at all, keeps elevating moral monsters like Sharpton, O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson -- a crazed narcissist who has done more damage than a street corner full of Jesse Jacksons; a stone cold murderer; and a pedophile who turned himself into a puke-inducing freak who made the Joker look normal.

Then there is Congressman Peter King, Republican of Long Island, who, crazy like a fox, told the truth about Michael Jackson. All other politicians and celebrities found something innocuous to say about Jackson, but not King, who said:

"He was a child molester. He was a pedophile. And to be giving this much
coverage to him day in and day out, what does it say about us as a country.
We're too politically correct. No one wants to stand up and say, 'We don't need
Michael Jackson.' … There are men and women dying today in Afghanistan. Let's
give them the credit they deserve.”

(As I try to point out to no one there, not even a chair, the men and women in uniform already are overglorified for doing their jobs. You cannot go to a public event without “our brave troops” being deified in a manner that suggests a daily nationwide Nuremberg rally.)

Even the right wing malefactor Patrick Buchanan said that when God puts his hand on someone (Jackson) it is time to take yours off. But Peter King, who has a long record of publicity stunts, said what he said because he wants to be senator from New York. And he is well aware that blacks don’t vote in the percentages that white people do.

So, call him the King of GOP.

The queen of GOP, of course, is Sarah Palin, whose rambling retreat from reality last Friday forever marked her as flat-out crazy. Many in public life are paranoid and narcissistic, but no one has been as politically incoherent or as wild-eyed and breathless. She makes Mark Sanford look viable as a Republican leader. Watch it and you decide.

Finally, Robert McNamara, personally responsible for 58,000 dead Americans, died yesterday and immediately joined Lyndon Johnson in hell.

D.C. Droppings -- XIII

Memorial Daze

The more awful our foreign policy is and the more we inflict terror on populations who don’t want to be democratic – and the more the public votes against such things—the more we as a country spew false love upon veterans and today’s “heroes,” the chumps who sign up to kill or be killed in order to get a college education. Or because they are too aimless to do anything else.

Of course, many young Americans sign up for the military because they feel they want adventure or they want to serve in a job that they see as heroic. But the only reason they see it that way is because civil society paints them as heroes, no matter what their cause or their actions.

You could not turn on the television or go anywhere in public this weekend without being drenched in phony bathos about our “heroes.” Memorial Day was once about dead veterans of the Civil War, then expanded to honor the dead of our good wars, the last one ending in 1945.

In my view, unpopular as it may be, there is nothing inherently heroic about signing up to do a job and then doing it. A lot of people face danger in their jobs, not the least of whom are teachers in urban public schools, traffic cops on pollution-choked city streets or drivers for fly-by-night interstate bus companies.

These soldiers kill for us in a war we all hate but we publicly revere them as gods? We all know why – it is a cheap way of looking patriotic, by honoring the troops but not the war. That is beyond stupid. If we didn’t honor them, if we had no Memorial Days, if we didn’t choke up publicly at every moment, if Marines didn’t lose whole platoons so that they would never leave a fallen comrade behind, then no one would sign up for future ill-begotten wars. We “honor” the troops because of a collective guilt about how Vietnam War veterans were allegedly treated upon their return. Except for the government itself forgetting their medical, emotional and financial needs, they were honored, or at least not dishonored, as is the canard spread by right wingers still fighting the wars of the Sixties.

Stop Him Before He Tortures Again

Which brings us to Cheney, the Dick. All that needs to be said about this sneering sniveling Valdemort is that he ducked service to his country five times. He wants Guantanamo to remain open, even though W. doesn’t.

But I wish someone would explain why Cheney is not there since he is the biggest enemy of our way of life.

When it was known we were torturing people, Cheney denied it , then said if we did it, it was legal and then said if it wasn’t exactly legal it was okay because the president had shysters on his staff say it was. And now he says violations of international law were not only effective but anyone who thinks otherwise is damaging our national security. Yet he also says it only happened three times or so and it was not his administration’s policy. So is he really saying, “Stop me before I torture again?

And if the secret CIA memos really do support the Cheney position that torture worked, how come they haven’t been leaked yet, as was everything else that made the war look good?

Needless to say, with the criminal-in-chief Bush unaccountably silent lately, it is Cheney whose patriotism must be called into question.

Coca Cola Health Plan

And what’s with Bill Clinton, from whom sleaze won’t adhere to the slime? He is a leader in global health and was governor of Arkansas, whose successor administrations instituted a tax on soda pop, in order to help curb the obesity epidemic. But now, the former billboard for junk food is speaking out against a move to apply such taxes in other states. How could that be? Oh, did anyone besides the New York Times mention, just in passing, that the Bill Clinton Foundation receives between $250,000 and $500,000 from Coca Cola?

Catch-2204 7832 6712 0095 Exp. 07/10

With Congress finally cracking down on credit card companies, the usurers will have to find new sources of revenue. And that means instituting fees and shortening the period in which you must pay. And that means a violation of that old Clinton chestnut about governing for “the people who play by the rules” because those of us who make sure never to carry a credit card balance will have to pay for the privilege of paying on time.

Spend a Night at the Museum

I am pretty discerning about movies, and rarely do we venture out beyond the confines of the indie house that features quality films. But despite my general distaste for Ben Stiller (loved his parents, though!) I think Night at the Museum, and its new sequel Night at the Museum: The Battle of the Smithsonian are the funniest and best made movies I have seen in a long time.

It is a PG movie that, like the best satire, appeals to two different audiences at the same time. And the effects are pretty cool, too.

Habemus Hypocrite

Cardinal Renato Martino, a former Vatican envoy to the United Nations and now Pope Benedict XVI's top official on issues of peace and justice, says Gaza now resembles a '"big concentration camp."

He should have asked permission first before making this statement since his boss is a former Hitler Youth member and head of the Grand Inquisition who should know what a concentration camp is really like. On the other hand, maybe he is reflecting the views of his boss.

The world is full of peoples who did nothing for the Jews during the Holocaust, large among them the Catholic Church, and the world is full of peoples who actively supported the Nazis, large among them Arabs and so-called Palestinians.

Shoe Fly; Don't Bother Him

I gotta hand it to him. Or foot it to him. Those were great reflexes for a man his age when President Bush twice ducked the shoes chucked at him by an Iraqi “journalist.” I put quotation marks around the word because, clearly, whatever stink a real journalist may wish to heap upon a head of state, the honor of the profession requires it be done in print or by word.

Throwing shoes is apparently the biggest insult available in Iraq, more so than bombing civilians and torturing its enemies.

This proves, then, that the surge worked. It could have been grenades instead of shoes.

And where was the vaunted Secret Service, whose members’ sacred duty is to take a shoe for the president?

Remember when those oppressed Iraqis began throwing shoes at the statue of Saddam, right after the Americans invaded Baghdad and then the statue was toppled by the spontaneous anger of ordinary Baghdaddies?

The truth of the matter, as I saw it is that the U.S. Army staged the entire event. There had been a permanent live TV camera placed somewhere above the square, and after a couple of perhaps honest Iraqis threw shoes, an armored personnel carrier in the background eventually moved toward the center.

Somehow, more people began throwing shoes, having been alerted by the CNN pictures, if not local TV, as to how to get some international shoe time. Somehow, that vehicle full of U.S. troops got closer to the statue. (By accident, the camera shot pulled back to show a relative few people in the square, but all you needed was enough to fill the 3x4 aspect ratio of a gullible TV screen.)

By magic, that APC drew nearer, a derrick was raised, and soldiers, with the diplomacy skills of 19-year-olds, were climbing the statue to put a rope around it, pull it down and raised an American flag over the scene -- an unintended, but enduring, symbol of U.S. colonialism.

That’s the real story nobody ever investigated, just one of many fabricated by agents of the U.S. government and lapped up by the dogs of war – American television.

World AIDS Day

Today is World AIDS Day, not a commemoration that usually impassions me, but it is hard to ignore the fact that “Dr.” Rick Warren, pastor of the Saddleback Church and one of the legion of right-wing evangelists who blame individuals’ lack of faith instead of capitalism for the worlds’ ills, will be giving an “International Medal of Peace” to President Bush.

This is like a roach giving a medal to the makers of Raid.

The ostensible reason for the honor is the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief [PEPFAR] that is in the midst of spending up to $50 billion to fight AIDS, malaria and other infectious diseases in low-income countries. The best that can be said about Bush’s plan is that he is making a belated attempt to crawl through the eye of a needle.

That a Christian group is giving an “International Medal of Peace” to the smirking chimp who as governor mocked the execution of a female murderer who found Christ in prison redounds poorly on Christianity.

To honor Bush for saving lives of Africans by paying for medications ignores the untold thousands or hundreds of thousands he killed by refusing to give money to AIDS-prevention programs that also used contraception. To give such a medal to a man who is personally responsible for the slaughter of perhaps 100,000 Iraqis and thousands of American troops, makes a mockery of all medals.

Just yesterday, a former intelligence officer estimated that “at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse.”

And this is what Barack Obama inherits. How ever many Clinton administration retreads populate the national security apparatus of the United States, the “change” sneered at by so many liberals and right-wingers is Obama himself.

He brings instant credibility, and, more important, the brains to navigate us back into civilization.

The “office of president-elect” may be an artifice, but it already has been imbued with more honor, decency and competence than eight years of rule by someone whose medal of peace might pierce his breast and leak an excrement of alcohol and bile.

Yes, They DO Have Consequences

After stealing one election and spewing fear and hatred to eke out another one, the Republicans would claim a nonexistent mandate to trash the Constitution and wreck the economy by gloating, "Elections have consequences."

Boy, do they! (Unless your name is Joe "the Traitor" Lieberman.)

Inside this morning's newspaper were these fairly short, fairly boring articles that more than anything else show how this past election has already started liberating the world from the tyranny of a political party that, since 1932, could win the presidency only if it had someone named Nixon or Bush on the ticket.

Israel's Olmert Vows to Set Free 250 Palestinian Prisoners

Bush Speaks With Libya's Gaddafi in Historic Phone Call

Bush's Reversal on Iraq Deadline Gives Obama Flexibility

Bush has 63 days left (if my math is correct) and nothing could honor his presidency so much as his leaving it.

My fervent wish is that he reverse the ancient medical oath of Hippocrates and "last, do no harm."

Can You See Sarah's House From Here?

This recent space photo, although hard to see at the resolution of this blog, shows melting of the Arctic ice cap. Only a problem if you're a polar bear or a wolf who hasn't yet been shot from an airplane by Sarah Palin.

Actually, an element of this photo reminds me of the outhouse she has turned Alaska into.

N
Courtesy, NASA

Horizon on the Prize

I’m beginning to think Obama should throw away the Baedeker for his ballyhooed Berlin trip.

photo credit: me, 1987

He might innocently misspeak and say something like, “I want to have sex with the Polish people” (Carter) or “The Poles are free” (Ford) or even, “I am a jelly doughnut” (Kennedy).

All he has to do now to become president is go into a stall and do as little as possible. (No, not the Larry Craig stall. Come on, people!) Why? Because Bush is adopting Obama’s foreign policy, undercutting McCain by the hour.

In the past two days Bush:

• Sent one of the top State Department diplomats to Switzerland to participate in multinational talks with – gasp – Iran!


• Agreed to establish an informal but very real diplomatic presence in – gasp – Iran!!


• Today he agreed with the puppet government of Iraq to arrange a timetable for ithdrawing American troops. No, Bush did not call it a “timetable,” since that would be like calling himself an appeaser, at best, and a traitor, at worst. He called it a “time horizon.”

As for the controversy over Obama making a speech at the Brandenburg Gate (the controversy, someone suggested, should be called "Brandenburg Gate-gate"), at least he isn't planning to visit a cemetery where Nazi SS officers were buried (Reagan.)

Obama may have big ears; Republicans have tin ears.

General Disgust

I bring to your attention the following article in the New York Times, which I find noteworthy mostly because I have simply lost my capacity to be amazed by the actions of this administration. It is about the Pentagon placing, scripting and rewarding former generals they send forth on network television to spew administration lies about Iraq under the guise of independent expertise.

I blame not the Pentagon – although Congress may want to investigate the use of public funds for domestic propaganda – but Fox, CNN, MSNBC, NBC and the rest for becoming “television of the stars” – the four-star masters of mendacity.

One of them, Barry McCaffrey, you may recall, led that successful “war on drugs” after his service in Gulf War I, where his actions were reported by Seymour Hersh to be border on war crimes. (photo credit to New York Times)


Following is a reaction to this Times article by an ex-colleague who makes comparisons that I would not make, if only because of differences in degree, not in kind.

• In the end, sad to say -- whenever that is, there'll be no Nuremburg Tribunal to hold to the fire the feet of those in the White House, the Pentagon, the military-industrial complex (the Halliburtons) responsible for the Iraq debacle.
• Unless we lose, since it's the winners who get to put the losers on trial. In such a case, I wonder what laws/constitution would be used to give what kind of "process" -- as in "due process" -- to the perps. The Koran, f'rinstance, does not give such as we understand that term to mean. And the so-called World Court lacks the teeth. Since mankind makes whatever "justice" exists in this life on this planet, who will be around to mete out the justice that this Nazi-like adventure of GWB deserves. The parallels between the Third Reich and Amerika are, IMHO, staggering:
• We have an autocrat in the White House -- one whose thinking is as delusional as Hitler's ever was.
• We have a politicized military, as much so as the Nazis were ever able to make of the Wehrmacht's Officer Corps and its Waffen SS and SS, etc.
• We have a propaganda machine the rival of anything Herr Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl wrought.
• We have a marriage between arms manufacturers (the Halliburtons) and the
  government that is the equal of anything the Krupps and the Thiessen's and A.G. Farben were part of.
• We have a military within our military (the Blackwaters) that is as exempt from the tenets and text of the Uniform Code of Military Justice as the SS was exempt from ANY law except its own under Herr Himmler.
• We have the cancellation of domestic privacy via computer circuits the rival of anything the Gestapo did using old-fashioned gum-shoe techniques.
• We have a gulag of "black-ops" detention and torture facilities and the "rendition" of suspects to them that is, admittedly, not up to the standards of Holocaust death camps or concentration camps. Yet. (Yes, this is egregious hyperbole ... but what the hell!?)
• We have the ability of the executive -- GWB -- to declare someone to be "an enemy combatant" and have him/her "disappeared" into a Kafka-esque netherworld where NO contact with the outside (not even a lawyer) is permitted. Indefinitely. Similarly, Hitler declared at least 6 million Jews to be "vermin," and ended their existence on Earth. He also summarily ordered countless executions of people he considered his "enemies," such as those Wehrmacht officers who tried to bomb him in his "Wolfschantz."
  
  In view of this, it would appear that a helluva lot of people in and associated with the Bush Administration are eligible for another Nuremburg. But it couldn't be at the hands of a "victorious" Amerika, since that would mean no trials. Who, then?

Perhaps a Clinton or Obama administration with substantial majorities in both houses and a Supreme Court in the hands of an angry God?

As I say, I do not subscribe to the “egregious hyperbole” of my ex-colleague (e.g., the Nazis were much better at propaganda that Bush is), but it is unleavened food for thought this Passover.

4,000 Dead. So?

Maybe you missed it, but during an interview last week, Vice President Dick Cheney was reminded by Martha Raddatz of ABC News that most of the American public strongly opposes the U.S. role in Iraq.

Cheney’s instant and visceral response was, “So?”

It may go down as the most revealing statement in history’s assessment of the Bush Administration.

Until history is written, however, here is a column in the Washington Post, by Mickey Edwards, a very conservative former congressman from Oklahoma about his old colleague, Mr. Cheney of Wyoming.

Today, the 4,000th American service person was killed in what President Bush declared was a “mission accomplished” on May 1, 2003.